“We’re really booked right now. We can’t do the job.”
“Could you give me an idea of what it would cost?” Jake asked.
The man handed the blueprints back. “We can’t do the job, sorry.”
“Thanks anyway.” Jake left.
It was the same story at the second and third machining company.
“With so many people out of work and the economy struggling, what do you think the odds are of three companies in a row being unable to take on any more work?” Jake asked.
Honi scoffed. “Did you notice at two of the places, the building next door was for sale? How good can business be?”
“Exactly.”
As they arrived at the fourth company on their list, there, next to the curb, sat the same red Harley Davidson motorcycle a hundred feet from the machine shop. Jake drove by and parked around the corner, out of sight of the motorcycle. He pulled his cell phone and called the FBI office.
“I need you to run a motorcycle plate.” He gave the number and a description of the bike. “Run a quick background check on the owner, too.” He waited.
“No wants or warrants from the DMV check. Running background now.” He glanced over at Honi. “No background information, no Social Security Number. ID is fake.”
“Thanks,” Jake said and disconnected. “Whoever it is, he’s using a fake identity. I may need your special help to take this guy down so we can find out what he’s doing in the middle of our investigation.”
“No problem.” She leaned into the back seat, unzipped the duffel bag and pulled out a baby-sized rubber doll and a baby blanket.
He looked at her suspiciously.
“You’ll see.”
Jake got out, rounded the corner and walked past the motorcycle. When he opened the door to the machine shop, the large, bald man was talking softly to a man in an oily shop apron. The large man glanced at Jake, said a few more words, turned and walked past him to the door. The size of the guy made Jake feel suddenly shrunken. The guy was six-five to six-six, around two hundred and eighty pounds and very muscular.
“It’s him,” Jake whispered. “We need to ask him some questions.”
“Sit tight.”
Jake approached the man in the shop apron and showed him the blueprints. As the man studied the blueprints Jake wandered back to the door and looked out the window. The large man walked quickly toward the motorcycle as Honi approached him from the street corner. She carried the doll wrapped up in the baby blanket. He could hear her talking to the doll in his ear bud as she closed in on the man. “We’re going to go see daddy, sweetheart. You’re just a little daddy’s girl, aren’t you?”
The large man glanced at Honi and then focused on his motorcycle. As she got next to him, she dropped the doll. By the time the doll hit the sidewalk, the blur was over and the man was falling to the ground like a felled tree. Honi grabbed the man’s head and lowered it to the pavement.
She must have done the same thing with me, Jake thought. He returned to the man in the apron.
“I can do the job, but I’m backed up for the next month.”
“Could you give me an idea of how much the machining would cost?”
The man looked at the prints again. “Ball park? Twenty-five hundred a piece, but like I said, I can’t get to it until next month.”
“Could I get a look at your shop and the quality of some of the parts you make?”
“We’re really rushed right now, but when you come back, sure, I’ll give you the tour.”
“Thanks,” Jake said, as he headed out the door. Twenty-five hundred a piece? he thought. That’s five times what my guy said it should be. Someone really doesn’t want any new business. Whatever they’re making, they’re being very well paid.
Jake entered the interview room at the FBI facility in Quantico, the office nearest to them. It was time for some answers from the guy who had appeared in the middle of their investigation. The man didn’t have any identification on him, just a large wad of hundred dollar bills.
“What’d you do with my bike?”
“We picked it up. It’s in the impound lot.”
The man nodded. “That’ll work. I assume you are running my prints?”
Jake looked back at the man.
“You’re going to have to make a phone call.”
“Really? Why’s that?”
There was a knock at the door. A technician entered.
“We ran his prints. All we got from the system was this phone number.”
Jake studied the man for a moment. “So, undercover investigator for federal or state?”
The man sat calmly staring back at Jake. “Just call the number.”
Jake punched the number into his phone. It rang three times.
“Special Agent Hunter, I presume?” the voice said.
Jake frowned. “Do I get to know what his name is?”
“I’m checking…I see your security clearance has recently been upgraded, so, yes. Please hand your phone to him, and can you take the cuffs off of him?”
“How did you…? Never mind.”
Jake reluctantly took the handcuffs off the man and handed him the phone.
“Yeah?” he listened for a moment. “Okay, thanks.” He handed Jake’s phone back to him.
Honi entered the interview room. The man looked at her and grinned. “That was one hellova trick. You’ve got to be really good to pull that kind of stunt on me.”
“Oh, the little woman with the baby thing? Guys fall for that every time.”
“The daddy’s girl was a nice touch.”
“So, shall we?” Jake asked.
“I’m Major Bob Stafford, US Army Intelligence and Security Command, Fort Belvoir, working undercover. The Army suspects we have a couple of bad apples dabbling in the black market weapons trade.”
“That would explain Benghazi,” Jake said.
“Benghazi? And how would you two know about Benghazi?”
“I’m Special Agent Jake Hunter, FBI.”
“I’m NSA Agent Badger,” Honi finished. “And it’s a little more than dabbling. It’s fifty million in machined parts going through Benghazi every month.”
“What? Fifty million a month is way too much money for small arms. We’ve got to get a look inside those machine shops and see what they’re really making.”
One o’clock in the morning in an industrial complex was about as quiet and deserted as it ever got. Stafford scanned the buildings with his night vision gear. No cameras, no infrared sensors. Looks like plain vanilla security systems, he thought.
“Satellite coverage shows you’re the only one around,” the text from Honi read.
Stafford approached the back door to the machine shop and used a small magnetic field sensor to check the door frame.
There it is, he thought. Magnetic switch mounted on the other side of the door frame. Simple, but effective. The magnet is mounted on the door. When you open the door, the magnet moves away from the switch, which opens, and the alarm goes off.
Stafford pulled a thin piece of metal from his back pants pocket. Neodymium super magnet in a very flexible thin strip. He wiggled the thin piece between the metal door and the door frame. It paused as he worked at getting it to bend and follow the top of the door, then it slid in deeper. That should do it.
Stafford pulled out his lock pick set, inserted the tension tool and then the pick with the small wiggles on the end. Ten seconds later the door opened slightly.
He extracted a six-inch-long piece of metal from his pocket. Got to hold the magnet in place, he reminded himself. He slid the magnetized metal piece into the section of the door jamb where the door was. It snapped into place. He opened the door and entered. Stafford examined the finished parts lying around the shop. He took infrared photos of all the parts so there wouldn’t be any visible flashes of bright light. Stafford also went into the office and photographed the contents of the file cabinets and checked the old computer setting on the desk. It wasn’t even password protected. He took a quick look at the file contents and shut the computer down. Forty minutes later he left, removing the bar, closing the door and pulling the thin metal piece from the door jamb.